Appeal No. 2006-0269
Application No. 10/166,154
made obvious the claimed invention.@ In re Gorman, 933 F.2d 982, 986, 18 USPQ2d
1885, 1888 (Fed. Cir. 1991). For the reasons discussed herein, we conclude that the
combined teachings of the cited references would have rendered obvious the claimed
article for cleansing body surfaces, to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the
present invention.
The federal circuit has explained in In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 985-86, 78
USPQ2d 1329, 1335 (Fed. Cir. 2005) that
[t]o reject claims in an application under section 103, an examiner must
show an unrebutted prima facie case of obviousness .... On appeal to the
Board, an applicant can overcome a rejection by showing insufficient
evidence of prima facie obviousness or by rebutting the prima facie case
with evidence of secondary indicia of nonobviousness. [In re] Rouffett,
[149 F.3d 1350, 47 USPQ2d 1453 (Fed. Cir. 1998)] 149 F.3d at 1355.
…
[T]o establish a prima facie case of obviousness based on a
combination of elements disclosed in the prior art, the Board must
articulate the basis on which it concludes that it would have been obvious
to make the claimed invention. Id. In practice, this requires that the Board
“explain the reasons one of ordinary skill in the art would have been
motivated to select the references and to combine them to render the
claimed invention obvious.” Id. at 1357-59. This entails consideration of
both the “scope and content of the prior art” and “level of ordinary skill in
the pertinent art” aspects of the Graham[2] test.
The examiner acknowledges that Farrell discloses a pouch formed of non-woven
sheet of polypropylene. Answer, page 3. Both Brennan and Thaman generally address
conventional or known types of non-woven sheets used in the application of cosmetics
and for application of compositions such as moisturizers to the skin. For example,
Brennan discloses that “it has been found that when appropriate fibers are utilized, the
2 Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1, 17, 148 USPQ 459, 467 (1966).
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